Dagmawi was born and grew up in Addis Ababa. He left his country after the 2005 post-election unrest in which hundreds of young people were killed and put in jail. After a long journey across the Libyan desert and the Mediterranean, he came ashore on the island of Lampedusa on 30 July 2006. In Rome, after participating in a video workshop in 2007, he co-authored the film Il deserto e il mare (The desert and the sea) along with five other migrants. Subsequently he co-directed the 2008 documentary film Come un uomo sulla terra (Like a man on earth). He shot the documentary C.A.R.A. ITALIA (Dear Italy, 2009) and Soltanto il mare (Nothing but the sea, 2011), along with several other short films. He directed the film Asmat-Names (2015), coordinated the collective film project Benvenuti in Italia (Welcome to Italy, 2015), and a documentary titled Va’ pensiero (Walking stories, 2013). Dagmawi is the co-founder and vice president of the Archivio delle Memorie Migranti (Migrant Memory Archive).
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